86 
INTRODUCTION. 
regulated in tlie same way by tbe position of the 
different kingdoms and provinces. There is, in 
short, a national physiognomy snperadded to those 
features of our race, which are common to all, by 
which even ordinary observers are generally able to 
detect a Frenchman from an Italian, or a Scotch- 
man from an Englishman. This nice discrimina- 
tion, however, is the result of observation. To us, 
the negroes of Africa appear destitute of these na- 
tional or provincial marks, and to be all alike ; but 
this is a great mistake. These sable nations ex- 
hibit, to the practised eye, as much diversity, not 
merely in the colour of their skin, but in their cast 
of features, as any of the European nations. And a 
Gold-coast negro is as different from a Bushman 
Hottentot, as the modem Greek from the dwarfish 
Laplander. 
We should scarcely have adverted to facts so 
generally known as these, but for the purpose of 
showing, that the laws by which the great Creator 
of all things has regulated the earth and its inha- 
bitants, extends to all who live and move and have 
their being upon it; and that the endless variety 
which we meet with in the animal world, is nearly 
as much subjected to this law of geographic dis- 
tribution, as are the different races and families 
of mankind. It is by this term that the study of 
geographic natural history is now designated. It is 
a branch of science altogether new ; for although its 
elements seemed to have attracted the attention of 
Linnceus, and some insulated theories have been 
